An audit of Ottawa child-care services has uncovered examples of such extreme sloppiness in the management of child-care subsidies that one councillor said the revelations “got my blood boiling.”Thomas Lohnes / Getty Images

Dozens of Ottawa children didn’t get the subsidized child-care they were entitled to because the city department that oversees the program ran out of money.

The problem? The department had failed to make sure those already receiving child-care subsidies still qualified for them.

An audit of child-care services has uncovered examples of such extreme sloppiness, which one councillor on Thursday said “got my blood boiling.”

The number of Ottawa children on a waiting list for a child-care-fee subsidy — which is intended to help low-income families cover the cost of licensed child care — has been overstated by as much as 25 per cent, the audit found. Put another way, a waiting list that claimed 984 children were waiting for fee subsidies was off by somewhere between 55 and 244 children.

And because the eligibility of families who were receiving subsidized care went without review for more than two years, the city may have paid out $1.5 million per year in subsidies to families that were no longer eligible.

In 2016, these on-going ineligible subsidies resulted in the city being unable to provide subsidies to new eligible families as the budget was fully spent.

“The most shocking part of this was that families that needed assistance to take care of their children didn’t get that assistance because those funds weren’t available,” said auditor Ken Hughes. “They were being given to individuals that weren’t eligible and didn’t need it.”

When families apply for a subsidized space, staff conduct an initial eligibility assessment. In five of 23 cases auditors examined, errors were discovered, meaning some families were either receiving more or fewer funds than they were entitled to.

Eligibility is supposed to be reviewed annually, but none was conducted for 29 months between 2014 and 2016, creating a backlog of more than 2,800 reviews.

When parents are found ineligible for subsidy, city policy requires staff to calculate the amount of subsidy that was provided after the person became ineligible. Any overpayments are then recovered from the parents. But, as the auditor found, staff treated overpayments as “administrative errors” and have not been recovering overpayments.

The auditor was unable to estimate how much money went uncollected.

Several councillors demanded to know why the department scrapped the annual subsidy re-assessments — and who made that decision.

Janice Burelle, general manager of community and social services, told the audit committee there was a significant amount of change occurring in the department as a new fee-subsidy model was introduced in January 2016. The model attaches subsidies to individual children instead of child-care centres.

“There should have been other checks and balances put in place,” said Burelle, who was not in charge at the time (She assumed her position after a corporate re-organization in July 2016).

According to Burelle, annual re-assessments have begun again and she expects the department to be caught up by early next year. Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans called the situation “regrettable,” because people who really needed the subsidies may not have received them.

While she acknowledged staff left to deal with the issues raised by the auditor weren’t in charge at the time, Deans pressed them on what could be done to make the reassessment process simpler.

The committee heard the department is currently developing a process that will put the onus on families to re-apply for subsidies, enabling them to provide the necessary documents online. This is to be implemented by the end of next year.

Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley, who chairs the audit committee, said the revelations contained in the audit “got my blood boiling.”

His office has heard from residents who desperately needed subsidies but couldn’t get them.

Hubley wanted to know who made the call to suspend the annual reviews.

City manager Steve Kanellakos confirmed the decision was made at the “most senior levels” of the department.

“Those people are no longer with the corporation,” Kanellakos told the committee.

The audit also found the 2016-17 child-care service plan, which council approved, contained several inaccuracies.

In addition to the faulty wait-list numbers highlighted above, the audit found the cost/benefit analysis of 11 city-run child care sites — which staff previously said had been completed in 2015 — wasn’t actually done. That analysis is now slated for completion in 2018.

The child-care services audit concluded with a list of 31 recommendations, all which city managers have agreed to implement, including more than half by the end of this year.

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